Within- and between-person associations between social interactions and loneliness: students’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced many restrictions to in-person interactions, and remote social interactions may be especially important for managing loneliness when such restrictions are in place. However, it is unclear how social interactions are related to loneliness when in-person interactions are limited. Data were collected between February 2021 and March 2022 from a sample of 581 university students. Participants reported their loneliness and participation in positive in-person or remote social interactions each day for 14 days. Results from dynamic structural equation models showed that participants felt less lonely than they usually felt on the days they engaged in positive remote interactions at the within-person level. Moreover, participants generally felt less lonely when engaging more frequently in remote interactions, but only when in-person interactions were restricted (between-person level). Some of these results varied by changing COVID-19 restrictions. Finally, for participants who felt lonelier in general, the effect of positive in-person and remote interactions on loneliness was less strong. These findings suggest that social interactions may buffer loneliness but are not as impactful for those who experience greater loneliness.

KEYWORDS:

• Loneliness
• social interactions
• daily diary
• within-person design
• online interactions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by funding awarded to Jessica P. Lougheed from the Aspire/Start Up Funding from the UBCO Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences [grant number F20-03321], from the Canada Foundation for Innovation [grant number 40825], and from the Michael Smith Health Research BC Scholar award [grant number SCH-2023-3044]. We thank Summer Fulford, Keaghan Forster, and Sierra Adamow-Boudreau for their assistance with data collection.